266 BRITISH BIRDS. 



uncommon, but we never found four in one clutch. After taking a few 

 nests of the Pratincole we returned to the salt islands and found the 

 Kentish Plover and Lesser Tern breeding on the sandy beach of the sea- 

 shore. Soon after noon we left again for Smyrna ; a stiff breeze was 

 blowing, and the sea was rather heavy, but, in spite of our being compelled 

 by the direction of the wind to make a long tack, we did our forty 

 miles in four hours and a half. I was, of course, dreadfully sick in 

 the open gulf, but after we passed the straits slept soundly from utter 

 fatigue. 



In the following spring I spent a week amongst the Gull-billed Terns in 

 the lagoon of Missolonghi, where this bird was equally common on similar 

 low, flat islands. I took thirty eggs on the 29th of May, and might have 

 taken more if they had been required. 



The eggs of the Gull-billed Tern vary in ground-colour from huffish 

 white to buffish brown, with occasionally a very slight tinge of olive. The 

 spots are never very large, rarely as big as a pea ; the surface-markings 

 are brown, and the underlying ones, which are always very conspicuous, 

 are grey. Occasionally the spots are most numerous round the larger 

 end of the egg, but they are generally evenly and sparingly distributed 

 over the whole surface. The eggs vary in length from 2'1 to T8 inch, 

 and in breadth from 1'5 to 1'3 inch. Small eggs of the Sandwich Tern 

 might sometimes be mistaken for eggs of the Gull-billed Tern ; but the 

 latter are almost always much duller in colour. 



The Gull-billed Tern utters a variety of notes, some of them Tern-like 

 and others more Gull-like. In Greece and Asia Minor at its breeding- 

 colonies its note reminded me of the laugh of the Herring-Gull, and might 

 be represented by the syllables ef, ef, ef, or af, af, af; but in the Black Sea, 

 as these birds flew over our boat, they called to each other kdy-vek, kay-vek. 

 Legge likens its call-note during summer in Ceylon to the syllables che-dh ; 

 and Irby, speaking of its habits in Algeria, represents its note as kuk-wuk. 

 Naumann was only acquainted with the laugh, which he gives as hay -hay - 

 hay. 



The Gull-billed Tern is almost omnivorous in its diet. Mr. Young and 

 I watched a flock of these birds, not far from one of the lagoons in the 

 Dobrudscha, hawking like Swallows or Bee-eaters over a field of standing 

 corn, apparently catching dragon-flies. Other observers have seen it 

 catching grasshoppers and locusts on the wing; and Naumann says that 

 it follows the plough to pick up worms and grubs, seizes small fish, tad- 

 poles, and beetles (though it only plunges its head into the water), and 

 that the remains of small birds' eggs and nestlings have been found in its 

 stomach. 



The Gull-billed Tern is intermediate in size between the Sandwich Tern 

 and the Common Tern, but the tail has not such a deep fork (nearly 1^ 



